my mom’s a crier, part two

On Christmas Eve, 2011, Katie and I were doing some last-minute shopping. She, of course, was wearing a Santa hat, as you do. Hungry from all of our elving work, we stopped at a nearby greasy spoon for a sandwich. While waiting for our food, Katie made a video that, unbeknownst to either of us at the time, her sister would watch again … and again .. and again … for two and a half years thereafter.

In the video, she teases her mama about the one thing for which I am perhaps most well-known — crying. I am, indeed a crier. I come by it honestly, being, as it were, from a long line of people who, as my grandma likes to put it, “have leaky eyes.” In fact, she once told me her theory that our family’s bladders were too close to our tear ducts, but I thought that was just kind of gross. But no matter why it may be, we do indeed have a propensity to cry. A lot. We cry when we’re happy, we cry when we’re sad, we cry when we’re overcome, we cry when we’re tired, hormonal, moved by beauty, brokenhearted, and well, sometimes, we just plain cry.

And so it was that Katie made this video, which she called, “My Mom’s A Crier.”

I have to admit, it’s pretty good stuff. And clearly Brooke agrees as she watches it over and over and, yes, over again. And, as she does with everything that she loves, she has begun to script it and make it her own.

Last night, she asked me to record her doing her version of, “My Mom’s A Crier,” and to “put it on YouTube.” The second part of the request was very important. She wanted to be able to watch her own video alongside her sister’s whenever she wanted.

And so it was that Brooke made THIS video, which we called, “My Mom’s a Crier: Part Two.”

This is the ultimate question. We must know the answer. Sure we could speculate, and we’d probably be right, but to come truly full circle, I think Part Three needs to be a video of both Brooke and Katie imitating their mama in happy tears as she watches videos of them imitating their mama.